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The Killing Fields Of India

The volcanic eruption of farmers unrest
in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra which also threatens to engulf pollbound
Gujarat had been simmering for long. The Narendra Modi government ,however,chose
to remain in a state of denial to their miserable plight reflected in the
rising tide of farmers suicides,countrywide.That is until a single individual
from his home state ,Gujarat, decided to take it upon himself to point out that
the emperor had no clothes.And with resounding success.

‘Main akela hi chala tha janibe-manzil
magar,log sath ate gaye aur karva banta gaya’( I had started out alone in the
quest of my goal but people kept joining in and it became a caravan).

The words rang true for a Gujarat
farmer whose desperate quest to stem the economic ruin and resultant suicides
by scores of farmers countrywide, is now yielding results.

It was milk and honey to his ears when on May 2 the Centre admitted before the
Supreme Court that over 12,000 suicides were reported in the agricultural
sector every year since 2013.”A total of 12,602 persons involved in farming
sector-8007 farmer cultivators and 4595 agricultural labourers committed
suicide during 2015 accounting for 9.4 per cent
of total suicide victims(133623) in the Country”, the Government of
India submitted before a bench comprising Chief Justice J.S.Kehar, Justice
D.Y.Chandrachud and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul. Maharashtra topped the list
with 4291 suicides, followed by Karnataka with 1569,Telangana 1400, Madhya
Pradesh 1290,Chhatisgarh 954.The government ,both at the centre and in the
states, have been all along dragging their feet in disclosing the true number
of such deaths. It has now been forced to disclose the figures. For all the
chest thumping,the change of guard at the Centre with UPA’s Manmohan Singh
being replaced by NDA’s Narendra Modi has apparently made no difference. The
economic ruin- forced suicides of farmers and farm labourers - has continued
unabated under the new rulers as well.

Bharatsinh Jhala, director of NGO, Citizens
Resource Action and Initiative (CRANTI) had cause to be happy when the Supreme
Court expanded the scope of his
petition- filed on the plight of the farmers of Gujarat leading to a spate of
suicides –to encompass the entire country.

On March 27, the apex court asked the
Centre to inform it about the line of action to be taken by the states for
dealing with the ‘serious issue’ of farmer s suicide. The Centre had sought two
weeks time to enumerate steps it was planning to take, the apex court gave it
four.

During the hearing the, Bench said
that the government should come out with a policy which deals with root causes
of farmers having to resort to such extreme steps.

The Supreme Court’s words were honey
to Jhala’s ears though he was at pains to point out that he was a mere cog in a big wheel that
had stirred the country’s highest court into taking action.”So many have helped
out in this endeavour . Mallika Sarabhai who founded CRANTI, Lawyer late Mukul
Sinha of Jan Sangharsh Manch who helped the legal fight in Gujarat, Mr
Colin Gonsalves who is fighting our case
in the Supreme Court, even paid for my travel from Gujarat to Delhi. It is the dedication
and selflessness of so many of them that has borne fruit. Every farmer of this
country owes them a debt of gratitude” he said.

During the hearing of the case, the
Supreme Court had pointed out that it felt that the government was going in a
‘wrong direction’ in addressing the real issues. Asking the Centre to apprise
it of the policy road-map to address the issue it pointed out that paying compensation
to the family of the victims ‘post facto’ was not the solution. Addressing
issues to redress the genuine causative factors leading to it , definitely was.

CRANTI filed the petition in the
Supreme Court on the plight of the farmers in Gujarat in 2013 and the spate of suicides
it had led to only after the Gujarat High Court turned down it’s plea that
these were policy matters and the High Court could not issue directions. Basing
its contentions on information gleaned through Right to Information Act( RTI)
from the government, CRANTI had contended that over 692 farmers had committed
suicide in Gujarat between 2003 and 2012 and had sought a compensation of Rs
five lakhs for each of them.

Jhala contended that perusal of the
police documents related to the suicides indicated that the farmers did not get
crop insurance money and this led to financial deterioration neutralizing their
ability to pay back loans leading them to take the extreme step. ’Let me put it
across simply to you ,a farmer spends
approx Rs 30,000 on a hectare and
if there is a good crop gets back Rs 22,000 on an average per hectare. And this
is the reason that from 2.20 crore people dependent on agriculture 20 years ago, the figure is down to 88 lakhs
today in Gujarat ”,he adds. It was for this reason that CRANTI has sought a
direction to the state government to announce a financial package for farmers
during drought as well as change in policy for drought affected villages.

The affidavit of the union ministry of
agriculture has also admitted that of a total of over one lakh suicides in the
country in 2013,farmer suicides were recorded at 8.7 per cent. Referring to the
data maintained by the National Crime Records Bureau(NCRB) the number of
suicides by persons self-employed in
farming/agriculture in 2009 was 17,368 and had come down 11,772 in
2013.It submitted that against the total population of 122 crores(estimated)in
2013,the total number of suicides in the country was 1,34,799 of which those under the category
of self-employed((farming/agriculture
was 11,772 which comes to 8.73 per cent of the total.

Interestingly during the 2014 general
elections, farmers suicide in Gujarat was the subject of a slanging match
between then state chief minister Narendra Modi and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal who had said that
5874 farmers had committed suicide in the last ten years while Modi put the
figure at only one farmer who had killed himself due to crop failure. The
actual figure given to Jhala in response to his RTI plea to the government
stands at 692 in Gujarat for the period between 2003 and 2012 when Modi was the
chief minister. On March 24, Gujarat agriculture minister Chiman Shapariya said
in the Vidhan Sabha in response to a question by Congress legislator Tejshree
Patel that 91 farmers had committed suicide across 14 districts of Gujarat due
to crop failure and debt burden in the last five years.

Additional Solicitor General
P.S.Narasimha told the apex court that the ‘PM fasal Bima yojna’(Prime Minister’s
crop insurance scheme) was the panacea for bulk of the ills plaguing the sector
and will provide insurance cover for all stages of the crop cycle including
post –harvest risks .The NGO’s counsel Colin Gonsalves had argued that the over-hyped
‘yojna’ had not even reached 20 per cent of even the small farmers largely
because the Central government had parked huge funds with private insurance
companies.

Interestingly, BJP has been in the saddle in three of the five
states reporting maximum farmer suicides, Chattisgarh since 2003,Madhya Pradesh
since 2005 and Maharashtra since 2014 !

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R.K. Misra is a field journalist with over forty years of experience working for some of the top news publications in India and abroad. Presently the Roving editor of The Free Press Journal of Mumbai, he is also the State Correspondent of the New York based international news agency, Associated Press (AP), news dailies Hitavada of Nagpur, Daily Post of Chandigarh and Outlook magazine of Delhi , to name a few. Beginning his professional career with The Times of India in Ahmedabad, he has worked as Senior Assistant Editor with Probe India and it’s sister hindi publication ‘Maya’ in Delhi and as Special Correspondent and later Roving Editor of The Pioneer and the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). Specialising in cross-country coverage of conflict areas like Punjab and Kashmir at the height of militancy , he has also done stints for the Gulf News of Dubai and the Arab News of Saudi Arabia besides the Tribune of Chandigarh, and Vijay Times of Bangalore. His specialization, however remains, Gujarat. He is presently based in Gandhinagar, the state capital of Gujarat.